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Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Diamonds and Children are forever

One of my cousins had a beautiful baby boy in the beginning of December. I wanted to make a baby blanket for him, but I couldn't find anything I liked. It had to be simple enough to memorize the pattern so I could carry it along with me.

I found a diamond baby blanket pattern on freevintageknitting.com but it wasn't a reversible diamond. It's still a lovely design, but it's done in stockinette with the outlines of the diamonds being purled on the right side and knit on the wrong side. The diamond were just outlines, rather than whole diamonds.

I looked and looked and looked some more but I didn't find anything I was overly happy with. So one day I sat down with a book of graph paper and drew a pattern. This is what I came up with. It's a simple 12 x 7 diamond pattern in a durable (and affordable) acrylic yarn. Enjoy!

CO 128 Stitches.
Knit 8 rows.
Follow Chart A, repeating each line 12 times per row. Knit the first four and last for stitches of each row. Repeat full chart 7 times for a blanket that is 12 diamonds by 7 diamonds.
Knit 8 rows.
BO.

Finishing:
Weave in any ends. For more balanced diamonds I recommend blocking the blanket, as they tend to ripple. Blocking the blanket will help flatten it out and make the diamonds more standardized with equal horizontal and vertical dimensions. However, do so gently if using an acrylic yarn like I did as any blocking runs the risk of becoming permanent and you don't want to over stretch the blanket.

The size of this blanket can be easily adjusted by adding or subtracting a multiple of 10 stitches. It can also be made into a more rectangular shape by adding or subtracting the number of full chart repeats.

Blocked blanket with EOS chapstick to show size

Let me know if you have any questions about the chart, written instructions, any part of the pattern, or anything else. You can send me a message here, or through email at teacupsandradios(at)gmail(dot)com .